Entries tagged with: TheSoftPack

San Diego's The Soft Packare about to depart the country for a European tour but on their way there they'll stop in NYC for a show at Union Pool on January 20. Sundelles and Skaters open the show and tickets are on sale now. If you didn't hear last year's fine Strapped LP, you can stream it below, along with the band's full tour schedule.

Previously on DFA Records, Free Energy's new album Love Sign will be out Jan. 15 via their own imprint, Free Energy Records. You can listen to two tracks now below, and pre-order the entire album at their website.

...Next came the great Warpaint / Hot Snakes / Chromatics dilemma of 2012. We love Hot Snakes, but with not-to-be missed hardcore Refused closing the evening, we needed something cerebral.

We picked Warpaint, and it made all the difference. The Angeleno quartet packed the main stage area to an earnestly mind-blowing set. No joke. Stella Mozgawa's metronomically perfect drumming is infused with the right amount of personality and swagger. To say nothing of the occasionally ethereal vocals and sonically interdimensional floating guitar licks. On top of the brain high, the all-lady act Warpaint drives a bit of a body-moving groove. If it weren't for the, er, gopher pockmarked ground, we might have just laid down and vibed out or whatever. Enough people did anyways... -[LA Weekly]

The ninth annual FYF Fest happened in Los Angeles with an incredibly stacked line-up that included M83, Warpaint, The Vaselines, Sleigh Bells, Fucked Up, The Men, Redd Kross, Refused, Chromatics, Cloud Nothings and loads more. And that was just the first day. Pictures of those bands and more from Saturday (9/1) are below.

Earlier this week, we posted an update from Baroness showing that things were looking upwards for the band. Unfortunately though, with two members having broken vertebrae and frontman John Baizely having a broken arm and leg, it doesn't come as much of a surprise that Baroness have in fact cancelled some of their upcoming North American tour dates, including their NYC show at House of Vans and LA's FYF Fest. They will not be replaced on the House of Vans lineup, which happens on August 29 and now just includes Turbonegro, Doomriders, and Nightbirds. This is a bummer but it makes sense that the band takes the time they need to recover, and we wish them a speedy and successful recovery!

Meanwhile, FYF Fest, which Wild Flag also dropped off of, recently expanded its lineup. It now features The Faint (who just announced they'll be reissuing Danse Macabre and touring the album), Glass Candy, King Tuff, and newcomersThe Orwells. Tickets for FYF Fest are still available. The updated lineup and flier are below.

The Soft Pack were in NYC a couple weekends ago for a rained-out River Rocks show and two nights at Union Pool, but have just announced a proper U.S. tour in support of their new album, Strapped, which is out September 25 on Mexican Summer. That tour hits NYC on October 4 at Bowery Ballroom with openers Heavy Hawaii. Tickets to that show go on sale today (8/17) at noon.

I went to both Union Pool shows and the band were in top form, armed with a fifth member on keyboards and sax. The new album is good and has the band exploring new corners of their sound, including one song ("Bobby Brown") that could only be described as "funky." The first "official" single from Strapped is "Tallboy" and you can stream that below, along with a list of all Soft Pack tour dates.

Your movie choices this weekend include indie romantic/fantasy/comedy Ruby Sparks, suburbs-vs-aliens comedy The Watch (supposed to be bad, but it does star the brilliant Richard Ayoade), noir thrillerKiller Joe, and the new Step Up film which promises to throw politics into the 3-D mix this time.

Or for something different and crazy violent, Nitehawk Cinema's midnight series "Summer in the City" is showing 1980's schlock vengance flick The Exterminator and you can watch the trailer for that below.

Gainsville, FL's David Levesque will release his debut album under his Levek alias, Look A Little Closer, on September 25 via Lefse Records. You may remember 2010 single "Look on the Bright Side," which dove deep into widescreen psychedelic funk. Look A Little Closer finds him dipping even more explicitly into '60s tropicalia be it Sergio Mendez-style trippy excursions to more trad bossa nova, as well as delicate folk. It makes for a refreshing listen on these hot humid summer nights we're currently experiencing. You can download the album's first single, "Black Mold Grow," at the top of this post.

Levek just launched a little East Coast tour that will hit NYC this weekend with two shows: Friday (7/20) at Pianos with Tropic of Pisces and Bad Girlfriend (tickets), and Glasslands on Saturday (7/18) as part of good line-up that includes Dent May and The Babies (tickets). All Levek tour dates are below.

The Babies

The Glasslands show is the first of four upcoming Brooklyn shows for The Babies who just wrapped up a tour of the West Coast. They're also playing July 25 at Public Assemblywith Wild Yaks, Beach Day, Daytona and DJ's Total Slacker (tickets), July 28 at Union Pool opening for The Soft Pack, and August 15 at Union Pool with Deep Time. The Babies new album, Our House on the Hill, is due out on Woodsist this fall but the first single from it, "Moonlight Mile" (not a Rolling Stones cover), is out next month.

The Soft Pack will be here at the end of the month, playing the free Hudson River Rocks show on July 26 with Oberhofer. The California band -- who haven't played here in nearly two years -- have added two more NYC shows to take place after the River Rocks show. Those shows happen at Union Pool on July 27 and 28. Tickets for both shows are on sale now.

In other Soft Pack news, the band's new, yet-unnamed album is in the can and will be out in September. All upcoming tour dates are listed below.

The Soft Pack, who will in fact be the surprise guest at both of the upcoming free Vice shows (that the band curated) in Costa Mesa and San Diego, are among those just announced on the lineup of Bruise Cruise II. The drunken "3 day tropical rock n roll vacation" opportunity will return in 2012 and is even already on sale!

BRUISE CRUISE FESTIVAL ANNOUNCES ITS SECOND YEAR!
FEBRUARY 10-13, 2012
TICKETS ON SALE NOW!
THREE DAY TROPICAL ROCK 'N' ROLL CRUISE VACATION
SAILING FROM MIAMI TO THE BAHAMAS AND BACK

FEATURING KING KHAN & THE SHRINES, THE SOFT PACK, THE DIRTBOMBS, THEE OH SEES, QUINTRON & MISS PUSSYCAT, NEIL HAMBURGER AND DJ MR. JONATHAN TOUBIN WITH MORE ACTS TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON

After a successful first year, Bruise Cruise Festival is back for round two. This year's lineup will feature an even crazier spectacle of today's best rock 'n' roll talent, including King Khan & The Shrines, The Soft Pack, The Dirtbombs, and America's funnyman Neil Hamburger. Coming back for another blast of sun-soaked fun will be Bruise Cruise favorites Thee Oh Sees, Quintron and Miss Pussycat, and New York's infamous soul DJ, Mr. Jonathan Toubin.

Read all about the first Bruise Cruise HERE. A video promo and the flyer for the 2012 edition, with more Quintron tour dates, below...

Kurt Vile/Times New Viking/The Clean: That three-band bill looks so good, I'd probably have trouble sleeping the night before such a show came through Vegas. At Matador at 21, it was but the tiniest sliver of a giant, weekend-long musical pie. Beginning at 2:30 p.m. Sunday, the festival's lone matinee event drew a solid crowd to the Palms Ballroom for its first two acts, then packed the place wall to wall for the third.

Kurt Vile, a rising singer/songwriter/guitarist from Philadelphia who's released three albums in two years, kicked off the day's music with his three-piece band, the Violators. The foursome delivered a satisfyingly dense curtain of psychedelically-hued classic-y rock. Really good tunes that sound even better live. If your tastes run toward Springsteen and Neil Young, track down a copy of 2009 Matador disc Childish Prodigy. [Las Vegas Weekly]

Philadelphia band Kurt Vile and the Violators (who recently played Matador 21 in Vegas) are heading out on a co-headlining tour on October 21st with The Soft Pack (who recently played two nights at Bowery Ballroom).

Both bands meanwhile have some dates of their own, and Kurt has some shows scheduled after then too. That includes a December 3rd show at Knitting Factory in Brooklyn with Philadelphia;s Purling Hiss (the side project of Birds of Maya's Mike Polizze) who will also be opening the Soft Pack/Kurt dates. Tickets for the Soft Pack-less NYC show are on sale.

The above downloadable Kurt track comes from Kurt's recent Square Shells EP. The Soft Pack one is a song from a limited edition, tour-only 7", titled Gagdad, that you can pick up on their tour with Kurt. The Purling Hiss track is off a new full length called Public Service Announcement being released by Woodsist on October 26th. Full tracklist, the newest Soft Pack video and all dates below...

""This festival is super-cool," said Strokes singer Julian Casablancas from the stage at Austin City Limits on Friday night. "Lotta stuff." It's true: The festival, now in its ninth year, packs 130 bands onto eight outdoor stages arranged around the 350-acre Zilker Park in Austin, Texas. The lineup is a mix of huge rock acts (the Eagles headline Sunday) and big-name indie bands, plus DJs, country singers and the occasional rapper. With an expected attendance of around 70,000 a day, the festival similar in size, if not in spirit, to Lollapalooza. "Lollapalooza has that city energy. It's like the hot girl you want to take home," one organizer, Lisa Hickey, said. "ACL is more laid-back -- it's like your best friend." And unlike South By Southwest, the music and film showcase that takes over the Texas town every spring, ACL doesn't have much of a music-industry angle -- it's almost strictly for fans.

On Friday night, the packed lineup presented the crowd with a happy problem: Four big-name guitar bands -- Spoon, Sonic Youth, Vampire Weekend, and the Strokes -- all had sets starting within two hours of each other, and seeing each set in its entirety was impossible."
[Rolling Stone]

Of those big four, Tim managed to catch three, and a bit of Vampire Weekend's favorite band Phish from afar. Phish's set included a Velvet Underground and a Talking Heads cover. Full setlist at the end of this post.

Kings Go Forth pictures are HERE. The rest of the pictures from the first day of the 2010 Austin City Limits Music Festival (where Ezra Koenig joined Miike Snow on stage), continue, with a bunch of setlists (including Spoon's which points out that Eleanor Friedberger played a Fiery Furnaces song with Spoon) (video proof too), below...

Yesterday was FYF Fest. We know all the problems... The lines... And are addressing them now. In no way are we sleeping on these problems. The bands were amazing and the turn out was unreal. I'm speechless. -Sean Carlson & FYF Fest

That's how the FYF Fest organizers started their post-fest email, which also outlined new, cheaper pricing to the three "fan fest" shows it hosted on Sunday in LA. For all the organizational problems on Saturday, FYF still managed to put on a highly enjoyable day of bands, around 37 total across three stages (plus a comedy tent), at LA State Historic Park.

The day's short sets kept you wanting more from nearly every act, many of whom played for a half hour or 35 minutes (which expanded in 5 minute increments up to an hour for the headliners). That made for tough decisions between overlapping sets. Ted Leo and band blew through their 45 minutes, and Titus Andronicus could've continued for another 35 at least with the momentum from their Monitor songs. Those two, along with Screaming Females, were part of what Ted Leo termed the "New Jersey Takeover" - three punk bands with Garden State roots who all played great sets at the fest.

Ariel Pink

Los Angeles represented with a number of notable hometown acts. Growlers, in grey facepaint, brought an earthy, ramshackle sound and lots of friends. Best Coast, Abe Vigoda, Local Natives and Ariel Pink also repped their hometown - the latter two with mezmerizing late afternoon sets.

Other acts brought some nice surprises. A chorus of kids, costumed as zombie versions of dead historical figures, backed Dead Man's Bones' Ryan Gosling and Zach Shields. The Blow introduced some of her new songs written for an unnamed celebrity (and played recognizable earlier songs too, including one "written with Sting...when [she] was 7"). And Big Freedia, the fest's only act with any trace of hip-hop, shocked the crowd with a short pre-headerliner dose of "Azz Everywhere."

Big Freedia

There was plenty of garage rock (Thee Oh Sees brought the man responsible for their cover art, William Keihn, to play tambourine), punk and metal. A reunited Sleep, in New York this week, grinded away, as !!! had people shaking their ass on the sister stage. On the fest's third stage, hardcore band 7 Seconds reminisced about their first time in LA almost 30 years ago and lead a spirited circle pit. Add to those bands, breezy folk from AA Bondy, the jams of Warpaint and Delorean to name a few.

If FYF's organizers are a bit defensive above, it may be with good reason: the few critical organizational errors were fairly memorable. A long line at will call (an hour would be a short estimate) kept many waiting in the 90 degree sun while the first bands of the day (Magic Kids, Let's Wrestle and The Goat) could be heard starting in the distance. Water inside was also an issue, with limited access to free drinking water and bottled water at $4 (which, according to Noah Lennox, ran out).

By the end of the night, the two final acts - The Rapture and Panda Bear - set up on competing stages. Panda Bear aka Noah Lennox interspersed his dreamy lullabies with patches of noise and dissonance while videos and images that could be described only as "trippy" played behind him; I think your response to the set depended largely on your state of mind after the long day: exhausted or ready for a patience-testing string of songs and sounds. He and The Rapture provided, alternately, a place to dance or doze.

--

Unsane also played a rare runion set at the festival where Off! shared a bill with Lower Dens. School of Seven Bells, Davila 666, Cults and Ceremony were there too.

Read what Noah thought about his own set, HERE. More pictures from the entire day, below...

"The Austin City Limits Music Festival began as a modest, two-day event and now, as it enters it's 9th year, has become a perennial American music experience. Taking place at the heart of Austin, Texas in the legendary Zilker Park, ACL Festival has grown to 3 days, 8 stages and over 130 bands."

The third and final round of the Coachella Music & Arts Festival was funky, and not just because the port-a-potties reeked. Keeping a loose theme every day (see Friday & Saturday), Sunday focused on relentless rhythm and groovy basslines. The absolute golden moment belonged to Yo La Tengo's blistering final song. Rhythm that revels in repetition + guitar that tries to destroy itself = wee mind blown. Sometimes the moodiest things are the most uplifting.

Thom Yorke brought his dancing shoes, his favorite Flea, and Nigel Godrich. His band Atoms For Peace played almost every song off The Eraser, many of which featured strong world rhythm sections. When Yorke didn't have a guitar in hand, he danced, whirled, and punched the air like he was rehearsing a scene from Fame. We wanted a high kick, but it didn't arrive. King Khan & The Shrines, on the other hand, featured legs flying all over the place, DJ Lance Rock and Yo Gabba Gabba characters, burning money, as well as a visit from the police-who crept on stage to snap pictures. Probably the first time Khan runs into cops and doesn't leave wearing cuffs. Sunny Day Real Estate had the audience offering bids to buy property, and Phoenix had people choking on dinner as they tried to dance and eat at the same time.

King Khan Gabba Gabba

Not every Julian Casablancas song captivated, but his band delightfully binged on rhythms. Each musician had a personal backbeat player supporting each fill. The drummer plus his sidekick especially sounded great. Matt & Kim's ebullient smiles inspired chaos in the audience, as usual. Mayer Hawthorne and the County revived Motown soulful brassiness and covered Biz Markie's "Just a Friend." The Big Pink played some new songs from next year's album, reaching out for Depeche Mode with a drummer in a pink bathing suit. Electro sweet popper Little Boots forgot her pants as well, wearing a sparkly shirt and knickers, and played with the lasers on stage. Charlotte Gainsbourg inaugurated her "first tour, first everything" with a feminine "Candy-O" sensibility, sometimes in French. Florence & the Machine rounds out the great lady performances of the day, and brought on Nathan Willett of Cold War Kids.

All clad in white, France's DJ ego-powers Club 75 demonstrated the ability to cooperate together with just a few elbows thrown. Cassius, Justice, Busy P, and DJ Mehdi still use CD's (so old school), and took turns passing on the headphones between them and finishing each other's remix sentences, trading places at each station. Backstage security bobbed along while staying tough. When it was their turn, Rusko turned the Sahara tent into a mechazoid robot battle and Orbital live-produced virtual reality anthems for Satan wearing Matrix miner lights around their heads. Infected Mushroom instructed on the benefits of "Becoming Insane" flanked by two mushrooms with red eyes.

The Middle East should not be confused with The Soft Pack, formerly The Muslims. The former may be from Australia but it sounds like a back porch band from Woodstock, and the latter offers a "Parasite" infestation that's as pure as sunshine and a neat drum set up that packs a giant tom punch. What appears as regular rock on headphones reveals its brilliance when experienced live. One of the strangest live moments of the festival belongs to Sly Stone, who played four hours late and on the wrong stage. He bitched, he slurred, he cursed, lay down, walked off, stopped songs and good grief, made a total mess of himself. But that's rock and roll.

Sly Stone made history look unable to get past its youthful drug phase, but Jonsi, Pavement, and Spoon come from a music scene that did a little bit less cocaine. Jonsi repped the awesomeness of Sigur Rós and great hats. Steve Patterson of White Rabbits joined Britt Daniels and the rest of Spoon to add percussion on "I Turn My Camera On". Spoon's tour-mate Bradford Cox (who played earlier in the day in Deerhunter) also joined Spoon on stage, like he did on their recent Kimmel appearance. Pavement ran through the hits during one of their first U.S. shows since reuniting. "That's the 90's in a nutshell," said Stephen Malkmus after the angsty "Unfair"...

"...Pavement, the iconic slacker band of the '90s, who took the main stage against what turned out to be one of the fest's chief attractions, the finally wildly popular French dance-rock band Phoenix, who wowed possibly the biggest crowd of the entire fest ... while Pavement played to a field half-full of true believers rather than the massive throngs many expected, and thought the band deserved.

No matter, though. Pavement still delivered a set that vindicated the group of prior crimes -- namely a Coachella performance near the end of their career so notoriously bad, many in attendance point to it as the moment the band decided to break up.

This night, however, they were tight, they were loud, and they sounded large on that vast field -- an odd statement, given the fact that in their heyday they were far more known for being introspectively small rather than arena-ready..." [The OC Register]

Virtual Snoop Dogg introduced the Gorillaz set, but Blur's Damon Albarn appeared in the flesh, with a few special guests including Paul Simonon, Mick Jones, De La Soul-who kicked their own old school jams earlier in the day-and Little Dragon's Yukimi. One unique rhythm transcended the next, showing the mutability of hip hop and dance music. And then that was it, suddenly. The festival ended and tens of thousands of people started wondering where they left their car keys...

Radiohead Peppers For Peace

Daiana's Weekend Top 10:
1. Yo La Tengo's last song
2. Little Dragon's Yukimi
3. Gossip leading a revolution
4. Thom Yorke dancing to African rhythms
5. PiL giving a history lesson
6. Sly Stone wigging out
7. Bouncing penises + fat people in undies (Die Antwoord + Major Lazer)
8. Devo putting on the hats that ushered in modern pop culture for "Whip It"
9. John Waters corrupting many young minds
10. The Gorrilaz lyric: "Super fast jellyfish going super fast. You can't even see him but you wanna eat him."

--

Owen Pallett, Local Natives, Miike Snow, and Yann Tiersen also played the fest Sunday. Gary Numan was among those who couldn't. Reviews & pictures from Day One, HERE and Day Two, HERE. Setlists (Thom Yorke and Pavement), pictures, and videos from Day Three, below...

"The 2010 Lollapalooza line-up is official: Soundgarden, Green Day, Lady Gaga, Arcade Fire, The Strokes, and Phoenix will headline, joined by Social Distortion, MGMT, Jimmy Cliff, Hot Chip, and The Black Keys. With 130 bands on this year's bill, its sure to be a weekend long feast for the ears.

It's a monumental year for Lollapalooza, filled with homecomings, reunions, and first-times. Soundgarden, 1992 and 1996 Lollapalooza alumni, return to the Lollapalooza stage for their first performance since 1997. Green Day will rock Grant Park sixteen years after their first Lollapalooza appearance. While Lady Gaga will headline the festival only three short years after playing the BMI stage at Lollapalooza 2007.

Arcade Fire returns to Grant Park, having played the reincarnated Lollapalooza in 2005. This is the first Lollapalooza for The Strokes - and also their first show in four years. And making their Lollapalooza debut: Phoenix." - Lollapalooza

Geeky, funny, tuneful Nodzzz were relatively quiet in 2009 -- at least compared to some of their San Franciscan brethren -- touring early in the year and only releasing one single. Mind you, it was an excellent one, "True to Life," which made by Best of the 2009 list. They're bound to have a new record in the works, so hopefully we'll get a bunch of fresh tunes.

Beaters

Beaters, from The Soft Pack's hometown of San Diego, are signed to Zoo Music, the label run by husband/wife duo Brandon of Crocodiles and head Dum Dum Girl, DeeDee. If you're familiar with their roster at all, you'll have a pretty good idea what to expect: dark, over-caffeinated, paranoid, heavy on the reverb. You can check out their single "Fishage" at the top of this post.

The Music Hall of Williamsburg show adds UK punks (and Sub Pop signees)Male Bonding who also play with The Smith Westerns and So Cow on Sunday (4/4) at Mercury Lounge.

Golden Girls

Two bands from Worcester, Mass are here this weekend -- Dom and Golden Girls. -- who play together tomorrow (4/1) at Pianos and then on Monday (4/5) at Cake Shop.

Of the two, I find Dom a little more interesting. There's some of that fifth-generation cassette tape chillwave sound going on, no doubt (which I'm getting a little waterlogged from frankly). But they've got some good songs under that hiss (check out "Bochicha" on their MySpace) and appear to play real drums and guitars (as well as crappy old synths) so I have hopes that their live show will prove less gauzy.

Golden Girls are more straight-up indie rock, a duo on recordings but are a four-piece live. Raucous and on the sloppy side, and with a single about cigarettes, you can draw a line from Golden Girls back to the Replacements pretty easily. They've only got two singles out so far, and I'm definitely curious to hear more.

A few more picks, by night, to take you through the weekend, along with tour dates and videos and stuff, below...

The Soft Pack celebrated the release of their self-titled debut LP on Kemado records at the Cake Shop on the Lower East Side of New York on Friday (2/5) with a free and packed midnight show. We had the chance to chat with lead singer Matt Lamkin after the show and before the boys from San Diego hit the road on a tour of the US and Europe that will finally wrap up at Coachella in April.

As previously mentioned, The Soft Pack (previously the Muslims) "did ten shows in one day in L.A. on January 30th with the help of FYFest's veggie oil powered bus." Photographer Rachel Carr spent the whole day with them. Check out the rest of her pictures (and a reposted video) below...

In a melding of the quintessential British band and the most American of events, the Who will deliver about 12 minutes of glory Sunday (February 7) at the halftime show for Super Bowl XLIV on CBS. The band is the latest in a line of mostly boomer-oriented A-list rock stars to play the spectacle, among them Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, Prince, the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney.

But those acts had something to promote -- be it a new album or an upcoming tour. Outside of a greatest-hits album released in December and at least one upcoming high-profile performance, the Who doesn't have much to announce at the moment. "Totally original, as usual," Roger Daltrey says with a laugh.

"We've got an event (planned) for a charity that I'm a patron of, but that's about it. I know Pete (Townshend is) working on material. It's not that we're never going to work again -- it's just at the moment there's nothing in the pipeline." [Reuters]

The Soft Pack are in the middle of a series of record release shows for their self-titled debut (under their new name), which came out February 2nd on Kemado. They played San Diego on Feb. 2nd, and will do Philly on the 4th, and a free, all-ages show at NYC's Cake Shop on February 5th (which is a week before they make their network television debut on Letterman). Think that's an ambitious travel schedule? They did ten shows in one day in L.A. on January 30th with the help of FYFest's veggie oil powered bus. Videos documenting that day are below.

The band travels to the UK and Europe later this month and March before returning stateside for a full tour. That'll include three NYC-area stops. The first is at Maxwell's on March 31st. Tickets are on sale.

They'll then play Mercury Lounge on Thursday, April 1st and Music Hall of Williamsburg on Saturday, April 3rd. Tickets are on AmEx presale now; general sale starts Friday (2/5) at noon.

All of the Spring shows seem to be with Beaters, and Nodzzz, the San Francisco lo-fi band who hasn't been to NYC in a year. Sub Pop signee Male Bonding is also on the April 3rd Music Hall bill. Male Bonding play Mercury Lounge with The Smith Westerns one night earlier.